4 Decision-Making Traps

  Decision Making   Leadership   ProjectsAtWork  

When managing a crisis, leaders must be willing to accept responsibility for their decisions and have the courage to follow through. But limited information, risk avoidance and self-preservation can lead to poor choices or inaction. Here are four decision-making traps to recognize and avoid.

Leadership in crisis is ultimately about decision making. Other critical steps, such as recognizing and isolating the crisis prepare you to make decisions, while the deployment of resources are based on the decisions made by the leader. The pivotal point in any crisis is the making of the decision about how one will deal with the crisis. Unfortunately, without recognizing the four traps of decision making, it is too easy to make the wrong decision.

Trap #1: Maintaining the status quo

One of the major problems in leading in a crisis is the psychological tendency to do nothing. There is a tendency to normalize events — to see what we expect to see. It is easy to miss cues or indicators. If there are no consequences for doing, there is no need to make a decision. Unfortunately, this is the default mode for many decision makers.

Trap #2: Taking the easy way out

Assuming that there are consequences for inaction, the next consideration is whether there is a risk in taking action. If there is no perceived risk in taking a specific action, there is really no need to make …

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